Team Hard Working Survivors of Lawful DoctoringHoward GraftYou regard yourself carefully in the mirror, your tie is straight, you hair immaculate, your suit is pressed, your slacks are creased, your shoes shine, and the head of your favorite pen sparkles like a gold nugget in your breast pocket. You take a deep breath in and let it out slowly, positive business thinking...
"I am a hard working man. I am the employee of the month. I am-" Your morning power mantra is interrupted by a glance at the clock. Hmm, that doesn't seem right... the bedroom clock says... Oh wait, you clobbered the bedroom clock when it interrupted you during a rare occasion of morning festivity. You'd forgotten that. You eye the bathroom clock with suspicion and check your cell clock, it seems to be collaborating with the bathroom clock. Damn.
"I am about to be seriously late." You mutter to the mirror as you blaze through the rest of your routine at top speed.
forty-five seconds, a breathmint and a shot of cologne later you make it into the living room... Normally by the time you leave Mary would already be up but it would seem that she too is being fooled by your traitorous nightstand clock. For a moment you consider waking her up to say goodbye but you think better of it, let her sleep in a little. You'll get her some flowers on your way back from work instead, but now you really Really have to go. You leave as quietly as you can, wondering whether the warranty on your alarm clock covers damage from sudden assault during adjacent sex.
Traffic is bad, one of the main streets apparently got closed off by an exploding chunk of building, gas main leak or something like that. Still, largely in part to your skill as a commuter and your downtown traffic evasion abilities, you manage to make it within a block and a half of your office before giving it up and parallel parking in the first spot you can find large enough to wedge your little vehicle into. A walk will do you good anyway, not your preference when you're already running late, but it should energize you for the rest of the day and improve your cognitive functions. (So sayeth the experts at least.) Squeezing out the door of your little Hybrid you manage a decent power walk for about twenty steps before being forced to jump sideways into on alley to avoid being run down by a passing cyclist. You swear at him in fluent german as he zips by beside you. You growl and attempt to enhance your calm but are (unsurprisingly considering how the day has been going) interrupted by a dirty voice from behind you.
"Hey man, you gah any change?" Internally you groan before turning around to face the speaker. He's a balding man, dressed in a cheap and tattered dress jacket, his teeth are melted -which explains his inability to make a 'T' sound- and he smells of pee and something else metallic that you can't quite place.
"No I'm afraid I don't, I'm sorry now I really have to-" you manage to protest before he cuts you off.
"Well wha' abou' tha' shiny pen, I could use tha'." You make the mistake of inhaling after a he finishes, the stench nearly overpowers you and you spend a moment trying not to tear the nose off of your face before you're able to make enough sense of his comment to reply.
"Er... No, this is my pen. I don't think you'd have much use for it, now I real-" This time he doesn't cut you off verbally, he just draws a long rusty butchers knife from out of his rags and leers at you evilly.
"How bou' you leh me decide wha' I can use, eh?" He says as he presses the surprisingly keen edge of the knife against your throat in one swift move.
"All kinda stuff are useful if you've gah an enrepanural mind.." You groan as he rifles through your pockets, partially at the fact that he's taking all your stuff, partly because he REALLY smells, and partially because of his mangling of the word entrepreneurial. The only good out of this day is that now you have a spectacularly valid reason for being late to work now.
The mugging is quick, he pockets pretty much anything that you had on you, wallet, your pen, your phone, your box of chewing gum, everything. You tense though when his beady little eyes catch sight of your wedding band. Your attempt to hide it by balling your fist is met with a growl and a dirty cuff to the side of your head. Finally resigned you uncurl your fist slowly as he presses the knife harder into the skin of your neck. Then, miracle of miracles a voice rings out from the mouth of the alley.
"Hey, what the hell is going on here?" You can't see who it is, the light from the street silhouettes them, but you get a vague impression of tanned skin and dark hair before your captor whips around to face them.
Of course whipping anywhere while you're holding a knife to someone's throat is not a recommended action, and the blade gashes your throat down to the spine.
You clutch your obliterated throat as the mugger kicks your body down with an expression of chagrin, not fear, not apology, just chagrin. Out of the corner of your blurring vision you can see the man at the mouth of the alley draw out a phone, yeah, that's going to do a lot of good now. The dirty man bends over to where your wedding band still remains attached to your finger, still struggling to get that tiny speck of gold off your hand. He's smarter that try and wrestle it off though, and besides a great deal of anger you feel very little as he cuts the ring and the finger with it away from your hand.
Laying there, crumpled and unbreathing in bright red puddle of your own creation you realize what that man smelled like underneath the rags and the grime...
He smelled like blood.
Tarran Smith"What happened to him?" Sit the man down and try to see what's wrong. I'm a doctor, after all.
Tackling the guy didn't work, but now... You have to try. [Charisma+Empathy (Difficulty
: Fail] You lay your hand on the mans shoulder carefully, but the instant your fingers touch the window of opportunity closes, you waited too long to act. Broad faced and smiling his visage returns, the flowers swell back to life and he once again seems the cheerful man you saw walk into the building. The same man who you're sure is about to throw himself back off.
Smiling his best the man throws the door open, striding forth and brandishing the flowers. He clearly intends to surprise whoever he got the flowers for.
If she happens to be the one one the couch who's not wearing a blouse and has her legs wrapped around another man then you'd wager that he did in fact manage to surprise her. There is a moment of crystal silence, the moment lasted only as long as it took for everyone's mind to shift gears. Joy and amorous intent on the face of the man with flowers twists to rage, surprise bordering on panic emerges on the face of the woman, and the other man just looks shocked.
Glasses grabs the first heavy object within arms reach, a decorative vase of cheap pottery. The woman disentangles herself, yelling something that seems oddly distorted to your ears. The man seems to finally grasp the gravity of a man coming at him with a twenty pound vase and he tumbles back over the couch in his attempt to flee. The sound you hear is like a bad tape recording, nothing is right, none of the words make sense... it's just sound.
It's just sound as the man with the glasses pummels the other man's face in with the vase, it's just sound as the woman yells for it all to stop, its just sound as the man with glasses crushes his foe's skull. Then silence reigns, the impossible dead weight silence that follows thunder's roar.
The man in glasses is still clutching the bouquet, spattered with blood as it may now be. He himself is doubled over and shaking, adrenaline, tears, you can't tell from this distance. Neither you or Kaguro had time to do anything but watch it happened so fast. The woman is silent and frightened but she still reaches a hand out to touch the shaking man. He twists at her touch and brings the bouquet around in a half-hearted backhanded strike. There is a frighteningly wet sound as the stems on the flowers impact her face, then she slides backwards without a sound. Toppling onto her back with the radiant flowers sprouting from her left eye.
The man's look of horror is impossible to imagine as he stares at blankly at the dead woman's body.
"I didn't mean it" he whispers
"they were just flowers..." Jesus Christ. He doesn't deserve this, yeah he was a murderer and apparently had anger management problems, but nobody deserves to re-live this forever. This train of thought gets wrecked by the light applause that seems to break out from several different points at once. Then the figures start to appear, their clothing is modern and fairly uniform, businesslike and proper. Even aside from applauding at the event as though it were a show though something about them strikes you as odd [Perception+Enigma=Complete success], it takes you second to pin down what it is though... The lead mans shadow is clapping at a different rate than he is.
"Well well, that never gets old, not as nuanced as it once was and I can't quite make out those screams at the beginning, but still, a wonderful show." He grins at you and Kaguro.
"And this time it even comes with a snack. Take 'em boys."Well that doesn't sound good, you're outnumbered 3-to-1 with Kaguro backing you up. The only door out leads onto a nearly completely unknown building, and even if you get back to the elevator there's no telling whether it'll work without the spirit to power it. [Intelligence+Alertness: Fair success] Of course the suicide express is about to depart any second, catching a ride on that would take you down 13 stories mighty quick.
Hikari ShizumeHikari looked at the circle, and walked up to it he turns back, and says "I will go through ahead of you when the others arrive follow, but be extremely cautious this world is far more dangerous than the old one." His words echoed through the alley as he stepped forward into the dark circle.
Walk through the circle.
You still your body and mind as you prepare to walk through the circle, removing passion, removing fear, removing doubt. Spirit and body must be one of there is to be victory on the other side. It takes the space of a breath and when you are ready you give a word of warning to the others, and step though.
The sensation is curious, like jumping through the densest fog imaginable, then there is a painful moment when your moment reverses and you are thrown back into the alley. [Will+0: Meager success] You land badly but roll to your feet immediately, you are in the same alley, but is not the same alley. Adrian and the chained man are not longer here, you can hear traffic, faint human voices, birdsong, and wind...blessed wind. It would seem that you are back among the land of the living. As you re-orient yourself on the mouth of the alley you notice something else peculiar, it's a mass of crime scene tape. Something happened here, and it happened recently.
You wait for the others and let a faint smile touch your lips, appreciating the irony of your last words to them given the present situation.
Adrian LeroeContinue with Ross, look suspiciously at the circle.
When you ask him if he's
really sure if you're supposed jumping through these things he just nods. It seems to be good enough for Hikari, that insane bastard just leapt through without hesitating. You give Hikari a good count of twenty before you start preparing to leap through, anything that man can't kill in twenty seconds he'll probably need help with. You just manage to psyche yourself up for the leap into nowhere when a light forms behind you, pale and luminous but sudden enough to make you jump and lose your focus.
It's about six feet tall and floats slightly, it looks like a large and somewhat distended cocoon. You recognize it as the kind of shroud that bound you earlier, but you never had a good chance to examine one before. A bump rises near the top for a moment before subsiding again, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is indeed someone (or something) in there. The question is, are you going to let it out?
Howard GraftYou sink the rest of the way into darkness slowly, and then it seems you sink past darkness and back into light. Dreams flicker before your eyes, bits of memory, fragments of old movies, everything. Huh, your life really does flash before your eyes. You feel strangely warm and safe, but something nags out to open your eyes.
You do, though it doesn't do a lot of good. You can see a pair of shadowy shapes, your murderer and your would be savior? Impossible...you've been asleep for so long...
Corpus 10/10
Will 6/10
Pathos 9/10
Inventory,
Stethoscope
Corpus 10/10
Will 5/10
Pathos 5/10
Inventory,
Katana
Corpus 10/10
Will 7/10
Pathos 5/10
Inventory,
Corpus 9/10
Will 10/10
Pathos 10/10
Inventory,
Suicide Knife
Laptop
Corpus 4/10
Will 2/10
Pathos 2/10
Low Mental Attributes
Very Low Physical Attributes
Very Low Social Attributes.
Find out what's happening to you (All )
Beware of falling people: Follow the wraith (Tarran, Kaguro 1xp)
Sweat of the Soul: Get Ross Talking (Hikary, Adrian 2xp)
A nightmare on elm street: Find out what you saw (Tarran)
Author
Topic: Wraith: RTD from beyond the veil. That's why you should avoid skinfreak clubs. (Read 41028 times)